George – lead
vocals, acoustic guitar, lead guitar
Paul – harmony vocals, bass, organ, electric piano, acoustic
guitar
Ringo – drums
Session musicians – eighteen violins, four violas, four cellos;
possibly fourteen-voice female choir, three trumpets, three
trombones, harp
The Let It Be film has a short sequence in which George strums his new song ‘I Me Mine’ – a “heavy waltz” – to Ringo, with John and Yoko waltzing (after a fashion) to the verse. (Not shown in the film is George’s choreographic advice to the couple – “Yoko, if you just put your right arm there …”.) In fact the song was brand new, having been composed just the night before. It is the last song performed in the film before the group move from Twickenham Studios to the Apple building.
The songs performed in Let It Be were either cover versions, such as ‘Besame Mucho’ and ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’, or were already released by the Beatles, such as ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ and ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, or were earmarked for the Get Back LP. The one exception was the run through of ‘I Me Mine’, which was only rehearsed on a single day of the Twickenham sessions (it was never played at Apple), although the group spent the day working hard to bring the song up to scratch. A flamenco-style guitar break between the verses would later be dropped in favour of the four-to-a-bar refrain. According to outtakes from the film, ‘I Me Mine’ is based on a tune played by an Austrian marching band that George caught on television late one night.
Because the Let It Be album needed to reflect the contents of the film, it was felt that a version of ‘I Me Mine’ should be recorded by the group. And so, with John being on holiday in Denmark, and with Abbey Road still on top of the LP charts, George, Paul and Ringo went into Studio Two at Abbey Road for the last time together, to record the song. John’s absence is possibly more than symbolic. He was extremely disparaging of the song when George introduced it, dismissing it as a Spanish waltz not suited to the group, being something that a collection of freaks could dance along to. Having contributed clownish noises and half-hearted playing to the rehearsals, John takes little further part in the run-throughs. He attitude may well have been defensive. George was coming up with increasingly strong songs, and showcased a number of songs that would later grace his six-times platinum triple album, All Things Must Pass. John meanwhile would himself later describe his main original contribution to the sessions, ‘Dig A Pony’, as a “piece of garbage”.
George didn’t mourn John’s absence at the 3 January session, and exploited the recent departure of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich’s lead singer to announce prior to one take “You all will have read that Dave Dee is no longer with us. But Mickey and Tich and I would just like to carry on the good work that’s always gone down in [Studio] Number Two.” The good work consisted of recording sixteen takes of a backing track of drums (recorded on tracks 1 and 2 of the tape), directly injected bass and acoustic guitar, onto which was overdubbed electric guitar and Hammond organ. The two drum tracks were then combined and jumped across to track 8 to free up tracks 1 and 2, onto which George and Paul recorded lead and harmony vocals. These were then also combined and jumped to track 7, allowing room for overdubbing of electric piano and electric guitar followed by a pair of matched acoustic guitars. Finally, George double-tracked his final “All through your life, I me mine”. Two days later, at Olympic Sound, Glyn Johns mixed the song for inclusion on Get Back.
And such was the completed track until Phil Spector got his hands on it.
George described ‘I Me Mine’ as being about “the ego problem”. He commented on the song in 1980, in his memoir of the same title –
“I hated everything about my ego – it was a flash of everything false and impermanent which I disliked. But later I learned from it: to realise that there is somebody else in here apart from old blabbermouth (that’s what I felt like – I hadn’t seen or heard or done anything in my life, and yet I hadn’t stopped talking). Who am ‘I’ became the order of the day.”
He had told Hunter Davies in 1968 –
“I don’t personally enjoy being a Beatle any more. All that sort of Beatle thing is trivial and unimportant. I’m fed up with all this me, us, I stuff and all the meaningless things we do. I’m trying to work out solutions to the more important things in life.”
The song is typically thoughtful and delivers its message well. A cheesy organ and mystic guitar combine for a haunting introduction, leading to sombre dejection in the verse. Everyone is looking after themselves, all day and all night. The repeated “I, me, mine, I, me, mine” is made only too predictable by the recurrence of the gently lilting acoustic guitar phrase. The disappointment George expresses is almost tangible – even those tears. Only on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ is he anything like as despairing. This contrasts heavily with the aggressive, visceral avarice of the chorus, with “I, me, me, mine” repeated as a mantra of greed, hammered home by the scything guitar. He even a change of rhythm to bring home the contrast. The verse is in gentle 3/4 time, thoughtful and deliberate, which gives way to the mindless 4/4 of the chorus.
Musically also the song harks back to ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ in its structure and harmonic progression, particularly regarding its use and development of the tonic, Am. Here the verse switches uncertainly through Am–D7–G–E (i–IV7–VII–V), with the assertion of Am–Dm (i–iv) in the chorus. But the parallel is strong on the line “All through the day / I, me, mine” when the base of the Am chord descends chromatically to F, while the bass rises diatonically to the same note.
Also worth noting is the reappearance of the chord that characterised ‘I Want To Tell You’ – the E7b9 (a chord he “literally invented”, if you remember), which is brought home here with “coming on strong” giving us the F on top of the E7 chord.
As was mentioned, the original song seems to have been recorded as an obligation for the film and to fill out the LP. As such, the three Beatles laid down the minimum the song required – after ten hours in the studio it was just two verse-choruses, and 1’34” long.
Enter Phil Spector, who lengthened it by repeating the section beginning at the last line of the first verse “All through the day, I me mine” up until “Flowing more freely than wine”. In doing this he extended the track to 2’25”, a simple device that improves the song appreciably.
It is odd that the orchestral contributions, taped by Spector on 1 April, are virtually inaudible, particularly compared to what he did to ‘The Long And Winding Road’. It’s debatable whether the female choir is even present on the track – it only seems to be audible under “flowing more freely than wine” – and only the strings can be heard with any certainty. Apart from a couple of rather violent plummets from the strings just before “All I can hear”, the entire overdub is uncharacteristically low-key. Let It Be… Naked keeps Spector’s extending edit but naturally omits his orchestral overdubs.
